do the backgrounds suck?

thinking back to the MK9 backgrounds each one felt very dark and mysterious like its a whole other world and very dangerous like outworld should be. as for the MKX backgrounds im not a fan of what theyve shown so far they dont have that dark dangerous outworld vibe like the awesome backgrounds in MK9 and they dont even feel like backgrounds anymore because of the interactable gimick everythings been pushed to the foreground so everything looks too busy and clustered. where as the MK9 backgrounds all felt more like a platform/stage that they could fight on with the background actually in the background! which i think works better because it means the background is indeed background without unnecessary cluster.

so looking at each one so far

the snow forest:


is probably the best one but still a bit plain and dull. i think this must just be a earth realm level so its good for what it is but nothing amazing.

outworld market place:


ok gotta be honest here i hate this stage it does not look like a Mortal Kombat outworld stage at all its all bright colours and very warm and too friendly looking for outworld it looks just like something out of Aladdin WTF! over all its boring with too much shit up in the foreground.

cove:

this one does have the outworld vibe but i find the huge rolling waves very distracting :/

now look how awesome these are





im hoping the next stages/backgrounds they reveal are much better

Nope, MK9's stages are cartoony. How are Roof Top, Subway, The Pit and so many other stages "dark"? The only dark stage I could think of would be The Forest, and MKX's forest blows it out of the water.

By the way comparing concept art to low res shots from a video is not a good idea...

The only thing I'm concerned about are the low quality textures on the characters...I mean from what I've seen it's really bad.

Snowy Forest I personally love, I enjoy the simpler stages like MK9's Rooftop Dawn.


Outworld Market is my favorite stage. Because it shows an underrepresented side of Outworld. The side that shows civilization. Not every single part of Outworld has man-eating trees and savage Tarkatans. Plus the stage is just gorgeous. How far out the background detail goes in unprecedented in an MK game.


The Cove is just plain awesome, although I do agree that the waves are a bit distracting.

Haven't read any of the replies, so I may be repeating stuff, but, no, they don't suck.

The snow forest is not dull; it doesn't need to have a million things going on in the background. It gives off a good sense of atmosphere with the colours and it is very pretty. The use of shadows give it a foreboding and the fog in the back gives the stage a mysterious ambience. The general colouring aids to this with the blue tint... it doesn't make it feel aggressive, just furtive.

The outworld market stage shows a side of outworld we don't see. It makes it living and breathing. In the past, all we've seen is man-eating trees and corpse ridden wastelands, but this shows us that Outworld is a living, breathing place.

The cove is not distracting; they're just rolling waves. If you get distracted by that, well...

don't ever play SFxT.

Actually, don't play that regardless of you get distracted by stages or not. It sucks.

But now I'm off topic.

Well considering the Battle Arena in MK Armageddon, Outworld Market Place actually fits. The building in Outworld Markets backround, is looks like Battle Arena's outside. And plus, they using some kind of beasts instead of horses and donkeys in backround, that should be considered too.

About the cove, well what can i say, you are right. Its so distracting for me too.

Xenon said:

By the way comparing concept art to low res shots from a video is not a good idea...

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Click to expand...

that concept art is super close to how it looks in game and the deadpool is an in game shot.
you can compare them its not about resolution its about the initial design.

I personally think that the three backgrounds presented until now are much more interesting than many of armageddon for example. Also, they fit perfectly in the game like the ones in mk9.

I like Outworld Marketplace the most, myself. It's kind of cool to see something from Outworld besides OMG TEH BAD GUYZ!11!!1!eleven The people there have an interesting dress style. Looks kind of like a mix between various Middle Eastern cultures.

Sooooo sick and tired of people calling anything about MK9 "cartoony". Absolutely nothing about that game is "cartoony" quit confusing subtle/cheezy humour as "cartoony". Nothing about those MK9 backgrounds or the game for that matter was cartoony. Never has been.

You could hardly even make an argument that Armageddon was cartoony. And it was the closest game to being such.

I disagree. I think the MKX backgrounds are pretty cool. Reason one, they're much wider. Reason two, they're new (the ones we've seen so far and likely more will come). Reason three, they're more interactive.

As for how they look, well... I'd wait until we see a classic arena to compare properly how it looked before and how it looks now.

Yeah, I totally agree with Sub-Zero. Only thing that seemed remotely cartoony to me was a few of the character's faces, like Liu Kang, and, to a lesser extent, Sonya. It wasn't dingy or dark and there was little exaggeration of body parts (Obviously, everyone was too similar and 'perfect' but there was no overly disproportioned upside-down triangle shoulders).

Fine, the game was a little light at times, but stages like the Deadpool and the Graveyard were not cartoony.

Street fighter is cartoony, MvC is cartoony, Jojo's Bizzare adventure is cartoony, hell, I'll go completely off genre, Fifa street 3 is cartoony.

MK9 is not cartoony. It may not be the most realistic, but it certainly is nothing like this:



and it's certainly nothing like this:


I've been meaning to say that for a while

I also like the new backgrounds. Outworld Marketplace is indeed a very interesting one. Shao Kahn's rule is over and the sun is shining once more in good ol Outworld lol. A lot of people hate OM because "Outworld is supposed to be dark and scary." Forgive me if Im wrong, but didnt Outworld used to be a much more elegant realm before Shao Kahn took over? Either way, this isnt the first bright, sunny Outworld stage we've seen. Anybody remember Jade's Desert?

I think the new backgrounds are OK, nothing mind blowing for me but i see nothing to complain about either, I guess my favorite so far is the snow forest because of how desolate it seems, but I'm sure theres plenty of great stuff still to come...they wouldn't waste all of their best content this early in promotion, what we're seeing is a mere taste.

That being said, part of the reason the MK9 stages were so awesome is because they were (mostly) classic stages from the old games that we all already knew and loved, just with a modern coat of paint. MKX is all new, theres no nostalgia factoring in with these stages.

I like these new backgrounds, they seem to fit

@ OP
Outworld Market place is friendly looking?

You can throw an old lady at your opponent, and she DIES in the process.
That's pretty damn dark, imo.
Even though it's daytime, the sepia-like type of background color palette gives it a sort of gloom that everything isn't OK in that world.
The MK X stages have more of a darker MKII tone to it.

The new stages carry the same tone as MK 9 if you ask me. Obviously no stage will ever come close to The Pit MK9, but MKX still look good

I like the stages so far and I think interactables are cool.

I think the mk x BGs a bit more interesting than the ones in MK9. The ones in MK9 were kinda boring except the armory, the wastelands, Shao's thrown room and a few more. The cove looks darker than both of the other two arenas IMO, the snow forest is really cool, but O.M. i dont really like that one, i dont like the music in it much either. Also i dont know how i feel about the music being dynamic by changing after each round. To me it doesnt really sound like MK. But i hope we have more stage fatalities this time.

I LOVE the snowy forest.
I like the one with the docks, and could easily live without the marketplace one.

What seems stupid about the docks is that the corpses always pop up in the same orientation, ie like they're standing up.

That marketplace seems awfully out of place.
I want MK to feel like it's judgement day, pretty much everyone is dead, and the tournament is (yeah, I know MK is no longer a tournament, screw that) is deciding the fate of the whole universe.
Crowds in the background doing their own thing makes the fight feel awfully irrelevant and trivial, like Chun Li's stage in Street Fighter II.

MK9 Backgrounds were great for MK9
MKX Backgrounds from what we've seen so far are just awesome!

What were you expecting?